Freddie Gillies’s bio reads like the epitome of the ideal OE – musician, round-the-world cyclist, travel writer and now debut novelist – but he takes pains to undercut the idyll in this story of four young expats coming undone on a jaunt through Italy.
Twentysomethings Andrew and Jess are settled in London and slowly grinding upwards at work (he sells carbon credits, she’s a recruiter), while their relationship gradually stalls. By contrast, Andrew’s best mate Jaryd and his glamorous partner Liv seem to have it all figured out, living the high life in Paris at the intersection of the startup and fashion worlds, making their reflected glamour and the chance to rekindle old friendships on an Italian road trip hard to pass up.
You can see disaster coming a mile off, which might explain why Gillies forestalls the cliché by setting it up so clearly in a flash-forward prologue – this is all about when and how the wheels will come off. Of the four central characters, Jaryd comes across early as a likely instigator of doom, a charismatic live wire whose volatile moods are turbocharged by drugs and alcohol. But both Jess and Andrew seem willing to be drawn along in his wake, as is Liv, who’s been instrumental in Jaryd’s success in Paris and is privy to the best and worst of his behaviour.
In the early chapters, there’s a lovely subtlety to the unspoken connections, secrets and emotional ties between the four lead characters. Gillies writes great drinking scenes in particular, capturing both underlying chumminess and potential for snap conflict and making the most of opportunities to throw fault lines between characters into relief. Of these there are many, sketched out over the increasingly tense jaunt through Italy, in the more downbeat moments that precede and follow it, and in flashbacks to the more fateful elements of childhood and teenage upbringings back home.
In outline, Because All Fades wants to be a downbeat psychological thriller, but Gillies doesn’t conceal a desire to say something about male emotional repression and the costs of a delayed coming of age (the novel’s three acts are entitled “Kids”, “Becoming” and “Adults”). The book paradoxically does better at nailing that second objective when it puts its more elemental thriller priorities first and foremost. Pace in general is Gillies’ friend, with much of the best character work coming through naturally in dialogue as well as in moments of stress and danger. The Italian setting itself feels most authentic when it’s taken in at speed, and when the author’s familiarity with location and landscape are worn lightly and kept in service of the plot.
It’s in the quieter moments, when Gillies takes a more direct approach to revealing backstories and pushing characters past their emotional blockages, that the subtlety of both dialogue and description slips and an element of more explicitly psychological melodrama begins to seep in. It’s not enough to fully break the momentum, but it does foreshadow a clear shift in the later part of the book to revealing and resolving emotional connections, with the pulpier aspects of the early story mostly foregone and one key plot line abruptly closed off. Whether it’s a smart upturning of expectations, or a swerve into didactic territory is likely to come down to taste. But the final confrontations and revelations still pack a satisfying punch. It’s hard not to wonder, though, if leaning into the darker impulses hinted at earlier in the book might have allowed Gillies to take a more consistent yet still emotionally astute route to the same destination. It’s a trip well worth taking nevertheless.
Because All Fades by Freddie Gillies (Bateman, $37.99) is out now.
